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Year Awarded 2021
FFAR award amount $999,957
Total award amount $2,543,829
Location St. Louis, MO
Program Seeding Solutions
Matching Funders The Danforth Center, Danforth Center Field Research Site at Planthaven Farms, The Land Institute, Perennial Agriculture Project and Saint Louis University
To ensure a plentiful food supply in the face of future climate-related challenges, scientists must diversify food crops by domesticating new species. Early farmers domesticated many annual plant species, those planted yearly, in part due to their quick growing cycles; however, these crops require agricultural practices that can harm the soil. Perennial crops, which live for multiple years, offer a more sustainable option. The challenge is that successfully and rapidly domesticating promising perennial crops relies on genetic screening of seeds, an expensive and time-consuming process. This grant is accelerating the development of perennial crops. The researchers are predicting breeding success based on the seedlings’ physical attributes.
FFAR award amount $612,257
Total award amount $800,000
Location St. Paul, MN
Program Plant Protein Enhancement Project
Matching Funders Benson Hill, Keygene, Syngenta, University of Minnesota
Plant protein is an important part of the global diet, but there are barriers limiting plant protein’s potential. Some amino acids, which are essential to diets, are missing or less abundant in plant protein. Also, a popular plant protein, soy, is an allergen for many. One alternative to soy is pea protein, but its nutritional value lags soy. University of Minnesota researchers are studying pea protein, develop methods for screening peas with superior protein nutrition and quality and breed these traits to cultivated peas.
FFAR award amount $189,794
Total award amount $760,271
Location Ithaca, NY
FFAR invests in a range of research technologies, including projects that use biotechnology and gene editing to make agriculture more sustainable, protect biodiversity and ensure that the world has sufficient food to feed a growing population. Through this award, the Alliance for Science, a global communications initiative, is amplifying FFAR-funded research and programs.
FFAR award amount $664,000
Total award amount $739,000
Location College Park, MD
Program Accelerated Crop Breeding
Matching Funders BASF
While gene editing technology has improved crop breeding and adaptation, the process of regrowing a plant from edited cells is costly, lengthy and unpredictable. Many popular crops are difficult to regenerate with existing methods. Researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a CRISPR-Combo system that will use CRISPR gene editing technology to kick-start the regeneration process.
FFAR award amount $1,997,454
Total award amount $3,997,423
Location Minneapolis, MN
Matching Funders Agricultural Utilization Research Institute, Cargill, Friends of the Mississippi River, Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, McKnight Foundation, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, NORI, The Land Institute, Walton Family Foundation
Summer crops such as wheat, rice, and corn can be profitable for farmers, but post-harvest farmland is unproductive for several months during the off-season. Fallow land can accumulate a variety of water-related challenges, including soil nutrient loss and erosion and precipitation runoff. However, continuous living cover crops can prevent these challenges and maintain land in the off-seasons. The University of Minnesota is developing models for sustainable supply chains that create markets for crops farmers can grow between seasons.
FFAR award amount $387,556
Total award amount $387,556
Location West Lafayette, IN
Matching Funders Open Philanthropy
Plant-based protein alternatives are a rapidly expanding market. Soy and pea proteins can closely replicate the texture of meats, but they lack the chewy quality of meat, known as viscoelasticity, which creates a tender bite. Researchers at Purdue University are studying the viscoelasticity of a corn protein, zein, to develop a new commercial meat substitute.
FFAR award amount $759,600
Total award amount $7,229,356
Location Davis, CA
Program Increasing Climate Resilience in Crops
Matching Funders Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, University of California, Davis
Common bean and cowpea are important legumes for food and nutritional security. These crops are susceptible to high temperatures, particularly during their reproductive stage and flower bud formation. This research is determining the effects of different high-temperature stresses on productivity, nutritional quality and physiological traits in genotypes of common bean. The team is also mapping genetic regions affecting heat tolerance traits and screening for these traits in locations with different temperatures and humidity.
Year Awarded 2020
FFAR award amount $796,878
Total award amount $1,593,756
Matching Funders BASF, Limagrain, Virginia Crop Improvement Association
Climate change is creating increasingly unstable farming environments, leading to unpredictable yields and quality. Crop breeding programs aim to develop crops that can thrive despite climate instability; however, breeding programs face their own challenges in predicting how the climate will change and how crops will respond. One specific challenge to breeding programs is the lack of information about how plant genomes and growing conditions interact, and how that interaction impacts agronomic traits such as yield. Cornell University researchers are studying how different plant genomes respond to environment conditions throughout the entire growing season, with the goal of improving crops’ climate resiliency.
FFAR award amount $900,000
Total award amount $3,272,723
Location Berkeley, CA
Matching Funders 2Blades Foundation, Innovative Genomics Institute
There are millions of Americans who do not know where their next meal comes from. To combat food insecurity, Feeding America is evaluating the effect of the Regional Produce Cooperative, a model that provides a greater variety of produce to food banks at a lower cost, on the charitable food system.
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